


Empty-Hand Heartache

by inkhat



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 07:55:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,258
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6043971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkhat/pseuds/inkhat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What happens to a family after they give their son to the First Order? What happens if they find him again?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Empty-Hand Heartache

It seemed to happen more in our town than in other towns, or maybe it only seemed that way. Men in black suits with blasters on their hips touched down and gave us a speech about how loyal we were, how we were chosen as the bright center of the universe. And we felt that way, even as we stood in orderly lines with our children in our hands. We felt that even as they took those children away. So many of us looked at the soldier in their clean white and wondered if sons, daughters, brothers, or sisters were looking back at us.  
Did they look back at us and see family? Did they wonder too?

In any case, it happened often enough that we spoke of it like an illness. Empty-Hand Heartache, we called it. Where is Mircah? Oh she stayed home today. Didn’t you hear? She has the Empty-Hand Heartache. It was good luck, they said, to have a baby taken. Good luck.

I had named him Kiran after his grandfather. He inherited my brown eyes and dark skin. No one saw much of his father, Santh, in him, except that his ears were almost exactly the same shape. Santh would point it out all the time, carrying him around the market while Kiran giggled.

They took him in his first year. A trooper lifted him from my hands and he didn’t even cry. He made a face, like he was cold or uncomfortable, and then the trooper turned away.  
That night I cried until I thought I would shrivel away, and when the Bark Rats called with the morning light I screamed back at them out of my window.  
“Hush! Sweetheart, please. It’s alright,” Santh tried to calm me.

And then I screamed something else, a high, angry noise I didn’t recognize until he dragged me back inside and made me promise I would sleep. I didn’t sleep.  
Empty hands. But my hands weren’t empty. First they put his toys away, then they put his little bed away. They started to work again, planting, growing, packaging. Sometimes I saw the First Order ships flying low and something inside me wanted to shake my fists at them, but that felt like bad luck. What if Kiran was on that ship? What if he felt my anger? So I just watched them fly overhead.

“What do you think they’re doing here? Mircah asked.

“Someone said there was a rebellion base in the jungle.”

She looked at the thick trees, where we had to walk with weapons and never at night, because something was almost guaranteed to drag you behind a tree and eat you. Probably a Nexu.

“Who would choose to live here?” she said.

We did, I suppose. And we chose to give up our children, and send our crops to the base. But when the raiders attacked they chose to abandon us. They came at night and they came loudly. We heard them well before they got to our fields, but there was nothing to prepare. We gathered out things and ran into the forest. Santh held my arm as I felt our way along the trees as the light behind us got brighter – our homes burning. We hid in the roots of the trees, the cold mud soaking through our clothes. We could still hear the celebrations of the raiders and the slithering movements of monsters in the trees.

We waited three days for the First Order to do something. There was almost nothing left – no structure unburnt. No field untouched. Our stores were empty. Our memories broken. No one came. Santh and five men agreed to walk to the base and ask for help, any help. Three of them returned, saying they’d been turned away at the gates and lost their way in the darkness. Santh was not one of them.

Grief is a strange illness. Sometimes it is like a stabbing pain, but more often it is like a numbness. It does not give you a burden. It takes away the things that make you light. We dug in the dirt for roots. We hunted Bark Rats and tried to boil their acid meat into food. We were starving. We were dying of all our Empty-Hand Heartache.  
And then, one day, the sound of a ship came from the sky. The numbness inside me broke open and hatred bloomed in its place, a flower dark as that fearful night. Would they come, even now, to take our children away from us? But the ship that appeared wasn’t the polished metal of the First Order. Instead it was battered, gray, with a symbol painted on the side like a great, red bird. Resistance.

They landed in the field where I once tended with Mircah and came to us without guns or salutes or speeches. They were more than human – they looked so odd to me. I had never seen so many species all working together. The man in front, young with wild, dark eyes and hair, opened his arms to us.

“We’re here to help,” he said, which was all he needed to buy every scrap of loyalty we had to give.

That was ten years ago. I can’t say I got better, or that the numbness ever went away or improved. I left home and traveled across the stars. I’ve learned to fix X-wings and load guns, all knowing that there was a possibility one of them might be used on Kiran one day. One of the things I touched might kill him – leave him bleeding in a ditch. I tried to forgive myself.  
One morning Mircah came to me as I was reviewing my report.

“Did you hear? There’s a Stormtrooper here, on base!”

“A prisoner?”

“No! He defected! Maybe it’s your boy.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“It could happen! Just go see him. He’s in medical. I glanced in and I swear he looks like Kiran. Maybe you got lucky.”

“There’s no such thing as luck,” I spat.

But I did go see him, and she was right. His skin looked like my skin. His nose maybe had the gentle curve of my father’s. I couldn’t see his eyes, but he made my heart flutter in a new way, and I felt light. I sat next to him and looked at his ears. Were those Santh’s ears? It had been so long, I couldn’t be sure. I wanted it to be true. I wanted to remember exactly, but surety wouldn’t come – only a tiny, fragile hope. Maybe it was enough.

There was a small sound above me and I almost jumped out of my seat. I looked up and into the eyes of a girl, dressed in gray. Her brown hair was tied tight behind her head.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “I was just leaving and I wanted…just a moment with him.”

“Of course,” I said, standing already, feeling out of place.

“I have to leave soon,” she said as she took my place, “will you look after him while I’m gone?”

I looked at this girl. I saw damage and a grief that looked familiar, but something else. Despite her struggles I saw her hands would never be empty. She would always fill them. Again and again, with whatever she could carry. Was this the kind of person Kiran was? Was this the kind of person I needed to be? I looked down at the man lying on the table.

“Of course,” I said, “I’ll watch over him.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first fan fic. I hope you enjoyed it!


End file.
